I think he was trying to be insulting.
Ouch, very immature, very odd from someone who uses Linux.
I believe that the problems seen with fglrx are (at my impression) in almost all cases, related with the Linux distro. I've been using fglrx since 7-12 with my Gentoo Linux (and kernel) and fglrx has been doing very well. No major issues.
I have fglrx 8.49.7, or 8.5, installed, and am running openSUSE 11.0, x86_64, kernel 2.6.25.11-0.1-default.
$fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5250
OpenGL version string: 2.1.7537 FireGL Release
----------------------------------------------------------
I have AIGLX enabled, and running compiz. Somehow, the video quality on full screen is poor. I am forced to use X11 video output on vlc (all other options crash it), which causes the picture quality to go down when i increase the size of the window.
I am not able to run Xgl, as it shows mesa libs as being used, when I run fglrxinfo. Firefox,with AIGLX for eg, gets stuck, and then jumps to fullscreen mode, instead of being smooth, like with Xgl. But, I cant play videos on Xgl as it becomes too choppy.
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...age=25&p=36189
edit: I tried disabling compiz, but no improvement.
Last edited by shishir; 07-26-2008 at 05:31 AM.
Ok, so I did some digging around, and found that in case of Xgl, MESA-PROXy is being used, and fglrx_dri.so is not being loaded.
Xorg.93.log snippet :
Code:(II) Initializing built-in extension XEVIE (II) Loading sub module "GLcore" (II) LoadModule: "GLcore" (II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules//extensions/libGLcore.so (II) Module GLcore: vendor="X.Org Foundation" compiled for 1.4.0.90, module version = 1.0.0 ABI class: X.Org Server Extension, version 0.3 (II) GLX: Initialized MESA-PROXY GL provider for screen 0
Last edited by shishir; 07-26-2008 at 05:32 AM.
A couple of years back I (and quite a few other people, too) had the same problem with the nvidia driver for a geforce 2500FX card. I remember that it took nvidia a few months to solve it.So it was a case of deja vu when I experienced it for the first time with my radeon X1550-64.The wierd thing is that a few users have seen this with the open source drivers (matching your description exactly IIRC) but I hadn't heard about it happening on fglrx before.
Anyways, I checked the kdm-logfiles, and the crash does actually leave a trace there:
Every time the crash occurs I can not restart the xserver, the system also locks up completely. The only way out is a hard-reset.Fatal server error:
Caught signal 11. Server aborting
Ok, so some more digging :), I changed the Xgl options, removing "/usr/bin/Xgl -accel glx -accel xv:pbuffer", instead of using pbuffer.
fglrxinfo :
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5250
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (2.1.7769 FireGL Release)
Now, I am not able to fgl_glxgears, or glxgears(it runs with no gears shown), and resizing it crashes the X session. Also, do see MESA-PROXY still being used.
Last edited by shishir; 07-26-2008 at 12:56 PM.
fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Radeon X1550 64-bit
OpenGL version string: 2.1.7769 Release
Ubuntu 8.04.1 (64-bit)
Motherboard: Biostar TA770 A2+ (with latest BIOS update).
I had similar problems with the past couple versions of the ATI drivers. What I experienced was an xserver crash, that often would lock-up the entire system. Playing around with several xorg settings only helped temporarily (less than 24 hours). At some point, I realized that these problems would happen mostly when running Miro, which I use pretty much every day. Miro would crash frequently. Using the ATI drivers, when Miro crashed it also took the xserver down with it, and often the machine would just lock-up.
Doing all kinds of searching on the web, I found that my motherboard uses an SB600 Southbridge. Also, using Phoronix Test Suite, I was able to find that my motherboard is NOT fully ACPI compliant. Changes to some kernel boot-options seem to have made my entire system much more stable. I added "acpi=off pci=nomsi" to the end of all the "kernel" lines in /boot/grub/menu.lst. Now, though Miro still crashes just as often, my system doesn't crash with it.
There are still some issues with "flickering" while watching videos with compiz running, but turning compiz off is my temporary remedy for that. I'm hopeful that Ubuntu 8.10, with xorg 7.4 and open-source ATI drivers will address the remaining issues. In the meantime, if anyone knows how to stop this flickering, I would be very much appreciative.
Last edited by ktraglin; 07-26-2008 at 06:09 PM.
I'm on Gentoo too. AMD64 (Intel Core 2). What ATI card do you have? With my X1950XT, fglrx is a disaster.
Also, what software do you run? I have problems with Wine, full-screen Flash (YouTube) and full screen Video (mplayer). X-Video is tearing extremely badly. And switching from X to a console sometimes results in the card locking up completely.